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The Hamline Green Team Brings Green Theme To Dining Services

Students
have teamed up to offer a new way to advance Hamline’s ethic of sustainability.
The Green Team brings together undergraduates who are interested in raising
awareness about sustainability, and educating others about how to make the
campus more environmentally friendly.

Right
now, the team specifically focuses on issues of recycling and waste as it
relates to campus dining. Nearly every undergraduate passes through the dining
hall in Anderson Center at one time or another, and there they’ll find the
Green Team ready with information about best practices and presentations about
on-campus sustainability.

“It
think it’s very necessary to have a way for institutions to educate the
community about these issues,” Green Team member Mariela Ojeda said. “People
need to have convenient information about recycling and how to be
eco-friendly.”

In order to have the most current information
on these topics, the team collects data for visual displays in the dining hall.
For example, they collected facts and figures related to recycling for their
recent “Did you know…” exhibit. They also created a board that allowed people
to offer suggestions for future issues or ask questions about topics they
wanted to know more about.

Hamline
itself has a sustainability taskforce, which meets regularly to ensure the
university is operating in an environmentally responsible manner, to generate
new ideas to make the campus more sustainable, and to create
opportunities to educate the community. In November 2012, the task force
started looking for students who were interested in being a part of the Green
Team. The effort was led by task force member, and director of Dining Services,
Gayle Hanson. The team’s advisor is Donna Krech, marketing supervisor for
dining services.

“The
students are expected to be willing to give presentations and be skilled in
personal interactions with peers and colleagues,” Hanson said. “The students should
also have a good understanding of how sustainability relates to the dining
services and be eager to learn more about those topics as members of the team.
They should also be familiar with life on campus so that they can have fun
and effective interactions with the Hamline community.

“I’ve
already learned a lot from the Green Team,” Ojeda said. “You have to find
solutions that are convenient and cheap for students. A lot of factors come into
play when educating people and encouraging them to recycle more.”

In
the future, the Green Team is planning projects for Earth Day. They plan to
acquire more and more ideas and opinions from students, as well as gauge the
level of understanding on different topics, such as which items can be recycled
instead of thrown away. By doing this, the Green Team will get a vivid picture
of the level of people’s understanding of sustainability, which will help the
team develop more effective educational materials and encourage community
members to make sound choices and act responsibly when it comes to the
environment.